Hoogly River and Sundarbans, Coastal India and Bangladesh – December 4th, 2011

Rivers in West Bengal, India and Bangladesh can be observed on the right side of this image, empyting sediments into the Bay of Bengal. Visible near the image center is the wide Hooghly River, a distributary of the Ganges River of approximately 260 kilometres (160 mi) in length.

To the east of the Hooghly River is the Sundarbans, the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world. The forest lies in the vast delta on the Bay of Bengal formed by the super confluence of the Padma, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers across southern Bangladesh. The seasonally-flooded Sundarbans freshwater swamp forests lie inland from the mangrove forests on the coastal fringe.